Is there a way to get version from package.json in nodejs code?

Question

Is there a way to get the version set in package.json in a nodejs app? I would want something like this

var port = process.env.PORT || 3000
app.listen port
console.log "Express server listening on port %d in %s mode %s", app.address().port, app.settings.env, app.VERSION

Answer 1

I found that the following code fragment worked best for me. Since it uses require to load the package.json, it works regardless the current working directory.

var pjson = require('./package.json');
console.log(pjson.version);

A warning, courtesy of @Pathogen:

Doing this with Browserify has security implications.
Be careful not to expose your package.json to the client, as it means that all your dependency version numbers, build and test commands and more are sent to the client.
If you're building server and client in the same project, you expose your server-side version numbers too. Such specific data can be used by an attacker to better fit the attack on your server.

Answer 2

If your application is launched with 'npm start', you can simply use:

process.env.npm_package_version

See package.json vars for more details.

Answer 3

Using ES6 modules you can do the following:

import {version} from './package.json';

Answer 4

Or in plain old shell:

node -e "console.log(require('./package.json').version);"

This can be shortened to

node -p "require('./package.json').version"

Even though this is not exactly what the question asked, it's useful if you want to use the version within package.json itself, for example to log to a versioned file in a script:

{
  "name": "myapp",
  "version": "0.1.2",
  "scripts": {
    "run": "node index.js 2>&1 | tee -a myapp_v$(node -p \"require('./package.json').version\").log",
  ...
}

Answer 5

The correct answers will be here in example:

1. Answer (this code include package.json file and get version)

   const { version } = require('./package.json');

---

2. Answer

   const version = process.env.npm_package_version

---

Please don't use JSON.parse, fs.readFile, fs.readFileSync and don't use another npm modules it's not necessary for this question.

Answer 6

Here is how to read the version out of package.json:

fs = require('fs')
json = JSON.parse(fs.readFileSync('package.json', 'utf8'))
version = json.version

Answer 7

There is another way of fetching certain information from your package.json file namely using pkginfo module.

Usage of this module is very simple. You can get all package variables using:

require('pkginfo')(module);

Or only certain details (version in this case)

require('pkginfo')(module, 'version');

And your package variables will be set to module.exports (so version number will be accessible via module.exports.version).

You could use the following code snippet:

require('pkginfo')(module, 'version');
console.log "Express server listening on port %d in %s mode %s", app.address().port, app.settings.env, module.exports.version

---

This module has very nice feature - it can be used in any file in your project (e.g. in subfolders) and it will automatically fetch information from your package.json. So you do not have to worry where you package.json is.

I hope that will help.

Answer 8

For those who look for a safe client-side solution that also works on server-side, there is genversion. It is a command-line tool that reads the version from the nearest package.json and generates an importable CommonJS module file that exports the version. Disclaimer: I'm a maintainer.

$ genversion lib/version.js

I acknowledge the client-side safety was not OP's primary intention, but as discussed in answers by Mark Wallace and aug, it is highly relevant and also the reason I found this Q&A.

Answer 9

Just adding an answer because I came to this question to see the best way to include the version from package.json in my web application.

I know this question is targetted for Node.js however, if you are using Webpack to bundle your app just a reminder the recommended way is to use the DefinePlugin to declare a global version in the config and reference that. So you could do in your webpack.config.json

const pkg = require('../../package.json');

...

plugins : [
    new webpack.DefinePlugin({
      AppVersion: JSON.stringify(pkg.version),
...

And then AppVersion is now a global that is available for you to use. Also make sure in your .eslintrc you ignore this via the globals prop

Answer 10

You can use the project-version package.

$ npm install --save project-version

Then

const version = require('project-version');

console.log(version);
//=>  '1.0.0'

It uses process.env.npm_package_version but fallback on the version written in the package.json in case the env var is missing for some reason.

Answer 11

You can use ES6 to import package.json to retrieve version number and output the version on console.

import {name as app_name, version as app_version}  from './path/to/package.json';

console.log(`App ---- ${app_name}\nVersion ---- ${app_version}`);

Answer 12

To determine the package version in node code, you can use the following:

1. const version = require('./package.json').version; for < ES6 versions

2. import {version} from './package.json'; for ES6 version

3. const version = process.env.npm_package_version; if application has been started using npm start, all npm_* environment variables become available.

4. You can use following npm packages as well - root-require, pkginfo, project-version.

Answer 13

I do this with findup-sync:

var findup = require('findup-sync');
var packagejson = require(findup('package.json'));
console.log(packagejson.version); // => '0.0.1' 

Answer 14

I know this isn't the intent of the OP, but I just had to do this, so hope it helps the next person.

If you're using docker-compose for your CI/CD process, you can get it this way!

version:
  image: node:7-alpine
  volumes:
    - .:/usr/src/service/
  working_dir: /usr/src/service/
  command: ash -c "node -p \"require('./package.json').version.replace('\n', '')\""

for the image, you can use any node image. I use alpine because it is the smallest.

Answer 15

Import your package.json file into your server.js or app.js and then access package.json properties into server file.

var package = require('./package.json');

package variable contains all the data in package.json.

Answer 16

I made a useful code to get the parent module's package.json

function loadParentPackageJson() {
    if (!module.parent || !module.parent.filename) return null
    let dir = path.dirname(module.parent.filename)
    let maxDepth = 5
    let packageJson = null
    while (maxDepth > 0) {
        const packageJsonPath = `${dir}/package.json`
        const exists = existsSync(packageJsonPath)
        if (exists) {
            packageJson = require(packageJsonPath)
            break
        }
        dir = path.resolve(dir, '../')
        maxDepth--
    }
    return packageJson
}

Answer 17

Why don't use the require resolve...

const packageJson = path.dirname(require.resolve('package-name')) + '/package.json';
const { version } = require(packageJson);
console.log('version', version)

With this approach work for all sub paths :)

Answer 18

why not use the native way? the other methods have failed for me.

// Load native UI library
var gui = require('nw.gui');

// Get the name field in manifest
gui.App.manifest.version